


an old western movie

by wttlpwrites



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Happy Ending, M/M, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 10:39:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5536799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wttlpwrites/pseuds/wttlpwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has a favorite cashier and Bucky has a favorite customer and it'll all work out in the end</p>
            </blockquote>





	an old western movie

Do you know the feeling of an old western movie? The quiet part before the protagonist cowboy walks into the saloon? There’s one lone old guy at the bar and a bartender lazily swishing his dirty old rag over the counter. It’s a feeling where you can almost hear the ticks and tocks of the clock, loud and pulsing and slow.

Bucky doesn’t work in a saloon. He works in a coffeehouse that serves around seven total customers, which does actually include one lone old man. He’s also swooshing a little white cloth on the countertop, and he can taste the ticks and tocks of the clock. 

Just as employee-of-the-month Clint was starting to fall asleep and Bucky was gathering a breath to form a sigh and the old man was staring at the dredges of his coffee-

The bell over the door rang.

 

“What’ll it be today?”

“Medium black coffee, please,” he said with a slight smile.

“Anything else to go with that today?” 

“No, thanks.”

“Name?”

“Steve.” Steve looked tired.

 

Bucky watched, and something disappeared from Steve when he sat down; it vanished from the air around him. Bucky thinks it was maybe the strings that were holding him up.

 

Steve came in four more times within the following two weeks. He ordered a medium black coffee for each one of them. Bucky asked his name for the first two times (out of pleasantries instead of an actual need), and didn’t the last two. 

Bucky liked to think that maybe Steve’s day got a little brighter when they talked in those short little sentences, but maybe Steve was too tired to think about which cashier was serving him the medium black coffee.

Bucky wasn’t sure that Steve likes coffee a whole lot.

 

“I think somebody has a crush,” Natasha said one day. Bucky wasn’t afraid of authority figures. Teachers, parents... managers. They all had to earn his respect. No freebies for seniority. Natasha had not only earned his respect, but had quite possibly stolen it from him without consent. 

For those reasons, Bucky did not respond with an expletive. He hoped that his look of contempt conveyed one. But, honestly... it wasn’t like she was /completely/ out of her mind. Of course, just by virtue of being Natasha Romanoff, she was always a little out of her mind. But, like, not completely. 

Because maybe, Bucky’s feelings toward Steve were possibly something similar to butterflies in stomachs and frogs in throats and other anatomical abnormalities. (And before your mind sneaks down into the filthy pits of hell, that was not a reference to a boner.) 

Bucky may have harbored, in some way, shape, or form, /feelings/ for Steve. A like-like, if you have to. But only if you must.

 

Once, Steve was in the middle of saying “medium black coffee”, when his phone rang. 

“Hello?”

-

“Yeah, Pegs, I’ll be right over-”

-

“It’s not a problem at all, I’m just across the street-”

-

“Alright. Love you too. See you.”

 

Across the street from the little coffee shop, there was a bakery owned by one Margaret Carter. Bucky liked the cookies and the cakes and had once or twice recommended the little business to family and friends.

Bucky was only a little bit heartbroken, because damn, that place made some fine cookies.

 

Steve was back in an hour. He smiled small at Bucky.

“Sorry about that. When your best friend tries to boost your ego by asking you to carry shipment boxes, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”

Bucky smiled. “Medium black coffee?”

“You got it, pal.”

 

After Bucky’s shift ended, he went over to the bakery out of maybe nothing but morbid curiosity. He ordered a half dozen chocolate chip and payed extra attention when Ms. Carter handed him the short white bag.

There was a ring on her finger, and Bucky had passed a coffee cup over enough times to know that there was no ring on Steve’s.

The chocolate chip cookies seemed sweeter than normal.

 

Bucky was sweating. His life wasn’t like an old western movie because if it was he’d be riding off into the sunset right about now but that wasn’t happening. The medium black coffee in his hands was not helping because it was too hot and Bucky most definitely needed something to help him cool off and there were probably pit stains forming on his uniform and that was disgusting-

The bell over the door rang.

 

“This for me?” Steve’s eyes were a little lively. Amused. Bucky was glad Steve felt amusement at his pain.

“Yes, this is for you,” Bucky said in lowercase letters.

Bucky asked Steve out, and it did not end in fire or death or destruction.

 

“I’m not good at this kinda thing,” Steve said as Bucky opened the door to the movie theater. 

Bucky’s smile was so bright, Steve worried for what little was good of his eyesight. “Don’t have to talk much, punk, just stay awake,” he teased. 

Steve didn’t blush, not even a little. It was just a bit in his cheeks. “I think I can handle that.”

“Can you handle the dinner afterwards, is the real question?”

 

Steve handled the dinner after. He learned that the real reason Royal Coffee stayed in business was because Natasha’s rich friend Tony made donations every now and then.

“She allows that?”

“He owes her, and she knows that. Not sure of the whole story, but I figure she understands wanting a debt to be settled.” Bucky shrugged, a contemplative look on his face. “Your turn. Tell me about yourself?”

“Not much to tell,” Steve laughed uncomfortably. “Grew up in Brooklyn-”

“No shit?” Bucky asked, surprised. “Me too, around where?”

They hadn’t been in the same school district, nor had there been any sort of childhood connection.

(It kinda felt like there had been, though, when they’d been sitting in a cheap restaurant in the state of their shared city.)

 

/“Hey, Stevie, this is Bucky, I was wondering if you wanted to go out again sometime soon? Alright, call me back, thanks.”/

Steve only played the message three times. It was two days after their dinner date. He wondered whether or not Bucky was wearing those pants, the ones that were dark and not quite jeans, but tight and kinda... fantastic...

The phone only rang twice before Bucky picked up. “Hey,” he said, a pleasantness in his voice that gave Steve a picture of raised eyebrows and blue eyes and a bright smile and scruff on Buck’s face.

“Do you wanna go to the park? Like, now maybe?” And Steve had never exactly been subtle.

“Yeah, yeah, I’d love to,” Bucky replied. “The one by the high school?”

“That’s the one. See you there in a half hour?”

“Sure, sure,” Bucky said, excitement creeping into his tone. “Wear somethin’ pretty?” he joked.

“I’m classier than that.”

 

There was a certain bench in the park; the bottom was splintered and always felt a little damp. It was the strangest size, just a little bit longer than normal, with the back of it an ornate pattern of metal. It was a little uncomfortable in the summer, when all you had on was a thin T-shirt and the nubs of metal were poking into your back like they had something to tell you. 

Bucky sat like he owned it, arm slung over the back of it and head turned the opposite direction from where Steve was coming from. 

“Hey,” Steve said awkwardly. He stood about a foot away from the bench, unsure of himself now that they were face to face and there was no more adrenaline keeping him rash.

“Hey,” Bucky returned with a smile. He patted the spot on the bench next to him a little theatrically. “Come sit.”

Steve sat. The silence was comfortable, and somehow they had ended up closer together, with Bucky’s arm being less around the back of the bench and more around the back of Steve. Neither of them complained.

“How do you know Ms. Carter?” Bucky asked out of curiosity.

“We met at art school. She was fuckin ruthless, dead-set on owning a business, and I could respect that. Not a lot of others could, though, but she showed them,” Steve said, smiling slightly. 

“She kinda reminds me of Natasha,” Bucky said.

“I can see that,” Steve laughed, and it felt like the sunset of the cowboy movie.

 

It was funny, how their relationship built itself. It didn’t seem to take much effort or much discussion, it grew into itself effortlessly. One day they were half-strangers, the next they felt like lifelong friends, and the one after that hands were smoothing over skin in a dance as easy as falling.

Lips over shoulders and hands sliding along stomachs and laughter that could have been years old.

 

“Stevie, this is a travesty.”

Steve took a long, slow breath. “Buck, really, I think you’re making too big a deal over this.”

“He’s really not,” Natasha said from across the counter. Bucky was on break and Steve was visiting and Clint was working the register. 

“Honestly, guys, I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of thi-”

“Steve.” Clint’s voice was hard, unmoving. “Just try a goddamn caramel macchiato.” 

(Steve did, even though it was against his morals of never /ever/ buying the fluffy drinks.)

 

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice was soft, but not quiet or timid.

“Yeah, punk?”

“I’m gonna stay here tonight.”

Bucky shifted out from completely under Steve to get a better look at him. “Yeah, sure. You alright?”

“Just don’t want to go home.”

“Alright, babe, fine with me.”

The two stayed on Bucky’s bed as the five-o'clock sun shifted into a not-quite-cowboy sunset and the colors were pretty enough to help them fall asleep far too early.

 

If Bucky’s life were an old western movie, that would be that. The big conquest would’ve been getting over his fear of asking Steve out. 

 

Steve wasn’t answering his phone and Bucky was angry enough to stop trying. And when Steve sent him a text Bucky just blocked his number and-

 

Neither of them could remember what it was about and neither of them could forget the taste of each other’s skin or the color of each other’s eyes.

 

Bucky took a few days off of work and Natasha bit her lip.

 

It was fine, Steve was fine, he’d just go visit the coffee shop and talk with Bucky and it would all be okay, but-

Bucky wasn’t there and Steve couldn’t go there anymore, not when all he could see was the corner where Buck almost tripped, on his way over to ask Steve out on their first date (God, anything but going out for coffee). Not when all he could taste was how, Jesus, the caramel macchiato really was disgusting, how had Buck ever convinced him otherwise? (It was because anything tastes better when it comes from someone else’s lips, when it’s tainted by this niggling little feeling that nobody will dare call love.)

Steve was not fine.

 

Bucky went back to work, a few days later when he decided that he would be fine, that he would be okay if he could just get their fling out of his mind-

(It wasn’t a fling.)

 

It was a week later and Steve was just going through the motions, getting up out of bed and getting dressed and wishing his mom was there and carrying boxes for a worried Peggy and going across the street for coffee-

The bell over the door rang.

 

Steve could not breathe because Bucky was smirking with someone whose order he was taking and he was biting his lip and /Steve had bitten that lip/ and-

Steve was back out the door and the bell had never stopped ringing.

Steve was sitting on the dirty sidewalk against the wall and it felt a little like an asthma attack was coming on-

Bucky almost tripped when he burst out the door and plopped down next to Steve with pain in his eyes.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said with a little bit of a sob. “I couldn’t pretend she was you.”

His letters were lowercase again.

 

“I fucked up,” and it didn’t matter who said it, it didn’t matter which of them was wrong in the first place, because at that very moment they were all right.

**Author's Note:**

> not sure about this one, let me know what you think!! thanks for reading =)


End file.
